Archives
Welcome to the archives of Better Cities & Towns, a publication founded by Robert Steuteville as New Urban News in 1996. This archive holds two decades of the best news and analysis on compact, mixed-use growth and development, from 1996 to 2015.
When the Bay Area Rapid Transit system announced in 1991 that it wanted to build a parking garage next to its station in the Fruitvale section of Oakland, the Spanish Speaking Unity Council said no, there must be a better idea. Fourteen years later...
Organizers of the federal HOPE VI public housing redevelopment program, longtime opponents of federally supported housing, and prominent new urbanists met for two days in Wisconsin in late March, trying to reach a consensus on how the federal...
Judith A. Corbett, founder of the Local Government Commission, a Sacramento-based group that helps cities and counties plan better, received the “Distinguished Leadership Award for a Citizen Planner” from the American Planning Association March 22...
People in Chittenden County, Vermont, are talking about whether they could use devices such as roundabouts, rather than a proposed Circumferential Highway, to relieve traffic congestion on Rt. 2A in the towns of Williston and Essex. The Vermont...
Public Architecture, a think tank and grassroots organization in San Francisco, has launched “1% Solution,” a program aimed at getting design professionals to commit one percent of their time to pro bono work. The new organization, at www....
Companion texts to Duany Plater-Zyberk’s SmartCode are in the works, aimed at aiding implementation. William Wright of Balch & Bingham, an attorney based in Birmingham, Alabama, has written the SmartCode Manual, a guide to the adoption,...
CNU welcomes its newest staff member, Heather Smith. As Planning Director, Heather will help advance CNU Task Forces and Initiatives and will serve as a contact for members needing assistance with other projects.
Heather’s planning background spans...
Reason Magazine, a voice of libertarians, published an article in the February 2005 issue that accuses New Urbanism of promoting crime. The 3,000-plus-word article by Randal O’Toole and Stephen Town sounds scholarly, with references to Oscar Newman...
Albuquerque developers Rob Dickson and Christopher Leinberger co-chaired the Governor’s Task Force on Our Communities, Our Future, which criticized contemporary development patterns such as large residential subdivisions with “suburban garage-scapes...
By Steven W. Semes
W.W. Norton, 2004, 192 pp., hardcover $55.
“Despite the urgings of the avant-garde in favor of radical experimentation and the relentless search for the unprecedented, traditional design remains the overwhelming choice of...
Few California cities in financial difficulty carry out first-rate planning. When governments feel pressed for income, they usually grab for auto malls, big-box stores, or whatever else will bring tax revenue.
The developers of Meriam Park in Chico, California, are proposing a bold plan which, for the first time in the US, would embed a professional baseball stadium into the urban fabric of a new town center.
The stadium for approximately 5,000 fans of...